Rivers: How to overthrow the Constitution

ALMOST every ruler in Nigeria since 1999 had toyed with whatever can be done to, at best, nibble at the edges of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution as now severally amended or even to overthrow it outright. This has been with little consideration for the oath they had sworn to uphold the same document and other laws thereto. The country’s oath of office and allegiance usually administered on the President at the point of assumption of office state in part:

‘I…do solemnly swear/affirm that l will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that as President…, l will discharge my duties to the best of my ability, faithfully and in accordance with the Constitution… and the law, and always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, wellbeing and prosperity of the …; that l will not allow my personal interest to influence my official conduct or any official decisions; that l will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution… ‘…; that in all circumstances, l will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, that l will not directly or indirectly communicate or reveal to any person any matter which shall be brought under my consideration or shall become known to me as President…, except as may be required for the due discharge of my duties as President, and that l will devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of Nigeria. So help me God.’

The lofty oath of office and allegiance notwithstanding, our experience has been that our rulers set out from the get go to subvert the law and undermine the Constitution. They begin from the minor infractions of the law to the more egregious attempts at toppling the Constitution. Over time successive rulers have become emboldened and audacious in taking down the law and blatantly ignoring the fundamentals of the Constitution. It started with President Olusegun Obasanjo who assumed office of the President in 1999 after sixteen years of military dictatorship. He was said to have awarded the contract for the construction of the national stadium in Abuja without recourse to the national assembly for due appropriation.

READ ALSO: 27 Rivers lawmakers: Court extends order against INEC, PDP

The contract ran into tens of millions of dollars. He got away with it. He was a retired general of the Nigerian Army. He was sprung from prison purposely to be coroneted as President. He was doing term for plotting to overthrow the military regime of Gen. Sani Abacha. After several other unlawful ventures in testing the waters, Obasanjo raised the ante when he moved to succeed himself in office at the expiry of his statutory second term. Nigerians fought him to a standstill and the third term gamble was aborted. Obasanjo’s daring move had the sole aim of overthrowing the Constitution. A chastened Obasanjo has, however, severally denied that he plotted to stay in office beyond the period allowed by the Constitution. But Nigerians know better.

The man who eventually succeeded Obasanjo, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua did not live long enough to act out his own impulses. Nevertheless the cabal in his presidency assumed the powers of a terminally ill President Yar’Adua and held the country by the jugular. While Yar’Adua was abroad on his sick bed and too infirm or probably unwilling to transmit power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, the cabal seized the country. The Constitution did not envisage that situation. But with tensions building and the country drifting, some in the ruling elite manufactured the so-called Doctrine of Necessity to retrieve power from the cabal and to install Jonathan as acting President. Soon after Yar’Adua was pronounced dead in a Saudi hospital and his remains flown home in the dead of the night. Jonathan was tentative and his administration was tame and lame. As we say in Nigeria, he did not have the liver to dare. He was so uncertain that he was harassed, intimidated and eventually stampeded out of office in 2015.

His successor, Maj.-Gen.[rtd] Muhammadu Buhari was a stain and an affliction on the country. Apart from hungering for the presidency and contesting and failing in three consecutive rounds of elections, Buhari took Nigeria more than 30 years backwards at the end of his eight years last May. He turned the country into a wreck in every aspect. He mismanaged Nigeria’s diversity; obeyed court orders he liked; promoted nepotism; hounded judges; wrecked the economy; made Nigeria global capital of poverty, among others. He ruled as it pleased him with scant regard to law and the Constitution. But to his credit, he did not attempt to perpetuate himself in office. Indeed, he is on record as saying he couldn’t wait to leave the presidency. Who wouldn’t be in a hurry to run away after the carnage he had inflicted on the country?

Of all the previous presidents, the current ruler of Nigeria, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is of a different hue. His dark antecedents preceded his accession to the presidency- ghost childhood years, controversial names, unverifiable schools attended, disputed academic certificates, uncertain employment records, Issues with dual nationality, shadowy sources of stupendous wealth or wealth without enterprise as his detractors are wont to say and his alleged drug deals and confirmed forfeiture of money, $460,000, to the United States government. On his inauguration on May 29, he summarily stopped the so-called subsidy on petrol without regard to the scheduled terminal date of end-June 2023. Nigerians are still grappling with the consequences of that unilateral action. President Tinubu is known to have played at the fringes of the law in appointments and policy formulations in his seven months in office. Now he is unravelling.

A little over one week ago, the President barred his fangs in the use and abuse of presidential powers. Under the pretext of trouble shooting in the violent dispute between Federal Capital Territory [FCT] Minister, Nyesom Wike and his godson who is the governor of Rivers state, Simi Fubara, Tinubu let out his bonafides as a pseudo-democrat. He has not been a democrat anyway in spite of claims of being in the vanguard of activists who gave Nigeria’s military opportunists a bloody nose and then chased them out of political power. The evidence of Tinubu as a pseudo-democrat is writ large in Lagos in the last 24 years including the period he governed the state. In a practical sense he was the only governor of the Class of ‘99 who remained governor until he was declared President of Nigeria on March 1, 2023. Because of term limit, he ruled Lagos by proxy by determining who becomes governor, which governor was allowed to run for second term, who was appointed as a commissioner and local government chairman and who occupied any other office of significance in the state. He determines whether a Christian or a Muslim becomes the governor. In fact there was a legend about him to the effect that whenever he rose from late night meetings with his political acolytes in his palatial Lagos home, he would yawn and exclaim that ‘Lagos is going to bed’.

That would be the end of such meetings. Tinubu was Lagos and Lagos Tinubu. On the Rivers state issue, a former commissioner for works in that state, Chief David Briggs, who claimed that he attended the ‘peace’ meeting said in a viral video that there was no meeting. He said Tinubu walked into the venue where leaders were assembled clutching a document which he gave to former Rivers state governor, Dr. Peter Odili, for a readout. The President thereafter said the readout from the document were the resolutions of the meeting. And the ‘negotiated settlement’ included the return of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] lawmakers including the Speaker who had defected to the All Progressives Congress [APC] to the Assembly. And to their positions. But they would retain their new status as APC lawmakers. Tinubu was reported as saying that he would not stop them from membership of the APC irrespective of how they decamped. The declaration of their seats as vacant by an elected and courtrecognized new Speaker of the House, Edison Ehie, and the letter to the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission [INEC] to conduct byeelections to fill the vacant seats should be disregarded. Though the defections appear to offend the law of the land, Tinubu allegedly said that it did not matter. Governor Fubara was also ordered to return the 2024 Appropriation Bill to the House of Assembly for fresh consideration. The bill had already been passed by a faction of the House and signed into law by the governor. But Tinubu’s ‘peace’ resolutions want Fubara to trample on the law in such a brazen and reckless manner. The ‘peace’ deal also ordered the decamped lawmakers to withdraw the impeachment notice served on the governor which actually sparked the crisis while the governor withdraws the cases in courts on the matter. The ‘peace resolutions’ were all stacked against the governor. Some of the attendees were dumbfounded. But former Green [now Super] Eagles left winger and an elder of Rivers state, Adokiye Amasiemeka, could not hold back. He reportedly queried the resolutions and asked Tinubu what was in ‘agreement’ for the governor. Of course, he was ignored. A few days ago, Fubara said he was at peace with the deal. His commissioner for information and communication, Joseph Johnson, echoed him, saying that his principal did not sign the deal under duress. It’s instructive, however, that the governor appears not to be in a hurry to implement his obligations in that deal which he signed voluntarily. This apparent stand-off leaves Rivers state, host to many of Nigeria’s oil wells and wealth, with peace of the graveyard. As usual many groups including youths and workers have started staging solidarity rallies in Port Harcourt urging the governor to disregard the so-called peace resolutions.

It is instructive that early in the life of this regime, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation published the 20 Nuggets of the Administration. One of the nuggets was the need for a ‘strong man’ [read dictator] and that that strong man has been found in Tinubu. We let that document slip. It’s just like Nigerians let Buhari get away with murder for eight years and today we are wringing our hands in regret. Currently, we are sleep walking into a market for the tyranny of one man. Everybody who is anybody including the successor of Tinubu as Lagos governor, Babatunde Fashola, who is a senior lawyer, has said that President Tinubu has no Constitutional role in resolving the political and legal problems in Rivers state. But he [Tinubu] insists on inserting himself but in a blatantly lopsided manner. And the outcome looks like the work of a mob boss of a Sicilian Family. If anything happens to Nigeria in the hands of this President, Nigerians will have to take responsibility. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you.

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